Painting Flowers
by KayRayLovesLove
Summary: Her ache is deep and unfading. His demons can erase her pain... if they don't erase her entirely. AU, Dark, Fast
1. un

_This whole shitfest, technically, belongs to Stephenie Meyer. And the title, technically, belongs to Alexander Gaskarth and company. Just let me take credit for these words, okay?_

All right, loves. This'll read fast and it'll update relatively quickly (and by relatively, I mean in comparison to my other fic, which isn't really updating at all, but for good reasons . . . sorry). In the meantime, take a look at _The Valediction_ by HumanShield, and _We Are Nomads, Bathed in Concrete_ by oxymoronic8. The first one shook me, the second one coaxed me into tears. Both inspired me to start typing.

Keep an open mind, and try not to hate the length of the chapters.

**\/\/\/\/\/**

**1. un  
**~ _Strange maze, what is this place? /_ _Wonder, why do we race? ~_

She writes her truth.

The lines glide across the screen, flow from her fingertips. These words are crafted on the spot – visual, pixilated evidence of her visceral, closet hatred of existence.

Her fingers are stiff and a hair band stems the circulation to her palm. Small pains shoot up her forearms, tingling up single tendons and pinching at the crease of her elbow – the beginning symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome – but she doesn't notice. These twinges, these aches: they _all_ go unnoticed. The soft, rapid clicks of the keys are echoing around the room, but no one hears their shallow timbre. Not even her.

She's too far gone.

She wonders what the point is. The raison d'être, the why. Why are we here? What goal are we trying to achieve, as a whole, as a world? Or is it all a joke?

Is _she _a joke?

And she pours it all out through her impatient knuckles and into the keyboard, purging her depression onto a blank Word document. She would write it down, but there's nowhere left to write, her Mont Blanc is out of ink, and her hands hurt too much already. Typing is easier.

Her tired terra-cotta eyes slide closed, but her fingers continue to move as letters churn against her eyelids like oil.

_I am my mother's indifference and my father's silent suffering, clashing, melding, in a battle to the death – something I may or may not welcome with open arms. We were all born out of ignorance and short attention spans that favor changes in the scenery . . . but of these nine billion people and the trillions that came before us, how come none remember what happened before the mother's womb? How are we all so oblivious? How can no one know of what is out there?_

_What if there is nothing?_

_What if _we_ are nothing?_

She briefly pauses to contemplate getting a degree in philosophy, or perhaps psychology, but she shoots the option down without a second thought.

This is her logic these days.

Nothing matters.

But what the fuck is nothing?


	2. deux

_Stephenie Meyer's a goddess._

Coldplay, Fix You.

Come on, y'all. You're reading and alerting, I know you're there. Tell me what you like? What you don't like? Why you flounce?

**\/\/\/\/\/**

**2. deux  
**_~ But if you never try you'll never know / Just what you're worth. ~_

In Forks, midwinter, a veil of grey descends.

Everyone is surrounded by trees that seem to breathe, move, speak. It storms all the time – the steady rain falls in gentle sheets over the forever-thirsty, ancient plants, and it produces a calm drone that is rarely interrupted by thunder as the water trickles and sighs over the overgrown leaves to the forest floor. The moss that's formed on the roof of her house muffles the constant rainfall so that what would have been a _tap-tap-tap _has turned into a quiet hum, and sometimes, it's a sort of beautiful sound, but most of the time it just reminds her that it's the one sound she can never escape.

There's nowhere to escape to, anyway.

Moss doesn't grow on the hood of her car. She leaves early so she can hear something different.

It's a tinny purr, like tap water over an old, rusty pan, and she drives to school with her hands wrapped loosely around the wheel at ten and two, hoping that maybe today will be better.

She might be right.

There are two cars she's never seen before in the parking lot. One is shiny and red. The other is compact and silver. They both scream _I'm richer than you._

She parks at the edge of the lot, thinking maybe she'll get the chance to be more invisible than she usually is as she steps out of the car. But, as if on cue, she's proven wrong right away when a dainty, waiflike china doll dances to where she stands in the mist. She's clutching a textbook to her chest like it'll explode if she lets go, and suddenly, the little girl is beaming up at her, swaying a little bit on the spot so that the hem of her dress whorls around her pale legs.

"We should be friends," she chimes, and people look their way at the sound of her voice. Her eyes are steel blue flecked with forest green, and they're friendly. "I'm Alice."

She's staring at Alice with watery Bambi eyes, and she feels like she's at a crossroads.

"Bella," she returns, and the little girl with skin like porcelain throws her arms around Bella's shoulders.

"We're going to love each other," says Alice, taking her hand and leading her toward the building as if she knows where she's going. "We'll be so close."

Bella should feel like she's suffocating – her throat should be constricting around an incongruous lump, and her fingers should be rigid in Alice's misleadingly firm grasp. She should want to run away to the library and hide behind her hair or in her Moleskine notebook, at the corner table by the window where the light's just a little bit less artificial. Bella doesn't talk to anybody, and nobody talks to her. It's how she likes it. Friends are unnecessary, and the concept is scary. Who would want to make themselves vulnerable like that, just for the sake of not having to fend off the loneliness alone?

Something's shifting inside her, but she doesn't know what.

"What grade are you in, Bella?" Alice asks. They're still holding hands, and Bella feels uncomfortable, but not enough to pull away. She wants to savor this feeling of warmth, even if people are looking at them now like they're _both _the new kids.

"Eleventh," she says, and Alice drops Bella's palm. The warmth goes out like a candle. "I'm a junior."

"Oh. I'm a freshman. We're going to sit together at lunch, is that all right?" she asks, and it sounds like she tacked on the last part as an afterthought.

Bella nods, but she's looking at her feet with a small frown on her face, remembering she never eats lunch in the cafeteria because there's no one to sit with and wondering why everything Alice says to her is in the future tense.

She follows the small crowd through the doorframe into first bell, unaware of the eyes that follow her to her seat and of the whispers that erupt like wind behind lazy hands.

It's only seven-thirty, but they're already talking about the new kids.

There's a fiery blond with legs for miles – she's the most beautiful thing you'll ever look at, but you'll have a hard time meeting her eye. She has a little sister: a tiny, vivacious, raven-haired ballerina that likes to giggle and hang off of people's elbows. She walks en Pointe through the hallways, and she's really weird. And then there's the lanky, brooding boy with hair like a crackling autumn fire and a face carved for angels. Oh-my-god, he's so hott.

Oh, and they're orphans.

Bella's not part of the gossip circle – she's not a part of _any _circle – which is why she's surprised she already knows so much about them on their first day.

The bell hasn't even rung yet.


	3. troix

_Stephenie Meyer owns me._

James Blunt, I think?

**\/\/\/\/\/**

**3. troix  
**_~ I saw an angel, / Of that I'm sure. ~_

Up until yesterday, all she would find when she looked into her future was a journal full of secrets and a melancholy so thin and clingy it felt like a second skin.

Up until this morning, her heart only beat for her disconsolate, lifeless father.

Up until now, she had only assumed Earth was the middle ground, the intermediary between pre-life darkness and whatever the hell comes after. Emptiness and vacant curiosity were her constant companions . . . the thing, though, was that's exactly how she wanted it.

It's so obvious to her, though – it's one of those moments caught in a mental snapshot, one of those moments you're positive you'll remember forever. Because Bella sees something new.

And she can't define it.

But it's laying there between them. It's so clear. Real. How can all these people not see it, not feel it? Not _taste _it?

Why won't he meet her eyes?

She hears them, vaguely, through a thick fog that clogs her ears and leaves her lightheaded. Alice is talking to her, introducing her to the devastating, indifferent blond that studies her nails and the Roman god that stands before her, and they're all sitting down at the lunch table, but Bella remains on her feet. If she takes one step forward, she will fall, and for some inexplicable reason, she doesn't want to embarrass herself in front of him.

She doesn't belong with these angels.

Time is passing in odd spurts and lags, slowing indeterminately and then picking up speed fivefold. She registers with a start that she's sitting in a plastic chair, with a tray of untouched food set before her, without really knowing how she got there. When her surroundings start to make sense, her eyes don't leave his, even if their gazes don't meet – he looks right through her. Over her shoulder. Above her head. Anywhere but her face, and it's killing her.

And she recognizes, with a little squeak that is lost underneath Alice's consistent stream of birdlike chatter, that she _wants _him.

She longs to carry a semblance of normalcy, of routine, outside of her awkward, tortured-soul journalistic tendencies. She wants to know why, exactly, her heartless mother left for the Arizona desert and never returned. And she wants her father to be the man he used to be before the love of his life hit the road and didn't look back.

But Bella's never wanted anything, any_one_, more than him, in all her life.


	4. quatre

**This is Kayla's sister, Autumn.**

**Kayla has cancer. We found out over the summer. Early November, she fell into a coma, and she hasn't… yeah.**

**We held out, but… her brain activity isn't… God. She's on life support. No hope. They might pull the plug. I'm so angry, I can't process it, but she's still alive. She squeezed my hand a couple days ago, so…**

**Our parents asked me to go through her phone, to reply to all the support she's been getting, and I noticed a lot of emails from FanFiction. So I thought I'd… check her FanFiction folder. She had two chapters lined up, this one and the next one.**

**Here they are. Think of her, she's obsessed with these stories.**

_Stephenie Meyer rocks my socks, yo. Fo rizzle._

The Bravery, they are musical genius. They also own the chapter.

**\/\/\/\/\/**

**4. Believe. **_~ And I need something more / To keep on breathing for ~_

Her poor hands.

They move so fast, without pause, and they're almost chafing together in her rush to expel this thrilling, heady feeling and capture it forever and ever and ever.

Her optimism is so, so rare.

Scratch that, _nonexistent_.

Bella's had no reason to be happy in a long time. She's not even sure if what she's feeling right now is happiness, either – if joy is the flame, then hers is a spark. To someone other, this feeling is nothing to be alarmed over, nothing to be ashamed of, and definitely not something out of arm's reach. For everybody else – the lucky ones, at least – they can feel like this every day.

She has to write, now, fast, ceaselessly, to cage this fleeting hope.

Hope?

Her pen moves faster.

And a large, cool, rust-dusted hand stills her jittery fingers.

Bella looks up from her notebook to stare at the hand that swallows hers whole, scowling slightly. No one usually sits in that seat – she doesn't have a biology partner. She works alone. But then her eyes are inching up the arm attached to the hand over hers, and in the wide, clear eyes that lock hers into place, she finds the one person she definitely _does not _need to have reading over her shoulder.

The words he inspired are exposed before him, and he's _right there_. She's glad she doesn't know his name, because if he had looked down to find it inked all over her paper, she might just _die._

She closes the cover over her chicken scratch, anyway, shielding it with her forearm so the abused plastic doesn't fly back open. Just to be safe.

And she ignores the electric current that flows from his palm to her core.

"What are you doing?" she asks, and her voice is hushed, but it carries without breaking – a contradiction of the riot that's made a home under her heart.

He smiles crookedly, and her breath hitches.

It's so cliché.

"I'm saving you."

Bella's mouth has taken on a mind of its own. It's opening and closing, and little sounds are coming out, but they don't make sense because she can't decide whether she should thank him, tell him to fuck off, or ask him what he's talking about. She decides on the latter.

"From what?" she finally inquires. It comes out all breathy, and it's embarrassing.

He finally takes his hand away, and it's like Bella's come to the surface for a breath of fresh air because now she's no longer drowning.

"From combustion. Your hand was moving so fast it looked like it might start to hurt later – but I'm sorry. Now that I think about it, that was a little bit rude."

He's so thoughtful and kind, and his voice, it's like honey pouring from a spoon, sweet and slow, and she just wants to bask in it, to be serenaded, but right now, she has to think of something to say so she doesn't come across as a bitch.

"No, no, you're fine," Bella reassures him, and she's sort of proud that she hasn't said anything weird yet.

"Okay," he says. His lower lip protrudes a little bit as he runs his tongue along his bottom teeth. "I'm Edward."

"Edward," she sighs, too quickly. The situation is two seconds away from being awkward.

He nods, and the left corner of his mouth turns up into a lopsided smirk. He's waiting, and Bella jumps, mortified by her infatuation, which is making itself so evident in her behavior.

"I'm Bella," she breathes. Could she humiliate herself any further?

Why is he even bothering with her now? Is she all of a sudden, in the short five minutes between the end of lunch and now, worth his time?

Mr. Banner chooses that moment to walk over to their lab table to discuss the semester's syllabus with Edward, unknowingly interrupting what could have been the most embarrassing, or possibly the most wonderful, event of Isabella Swan's short seventeen years.


	5. cinq

**Last one.**

_Steph has the right to sue me, but she doesn't. Thanks darling._

Anna Nalick owns the chapter. I'm hiding a lot in this, and creating a lot of loopholes, so try not to take everything too literally.

**\/\/\/\/\/**

**5. cinq  
**_~ You can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable / And life's like an hourglass glued to the table. ~_

He stares out his bedroom window into inky blackness, and all he sees is the rain, blown in artless loops and arcs by the pacific breeze. At first, it was a lullaby. He could get used to this.

But it never fucking _stops_.

Edward Masen is tired, but he will not go to sleep. Right now, it's eleven o'clock, and tomorrow there is school. Physically, he is exhausted, but that's hardly the definition he would use if he were looking for one. Sleep never comes willingly, so his overused mind has backed itself into a corner.

He is so. God damn. _Sick of it._

He's tired of being passed from family to family like untouched vegetables around the dinner table on Thanksgiving; of becoming familiar with new surroundings and new faces and putting down tentative roots, only to be yanked up and ripped away and planted somewhere else; of keeping face; of waxing poetic about a new home to his sisters; of being so fucking fake and sunny and positive, despite the fact he feels so empty and dead inside. This isn't his life. He's just watching through the eyes of a stranger.

Above all, though, he feels guilty. It's because of him they've lived in seven different states, thirteen different towns, three different time zones, by both borders, both oceans. They all love the gorgeous, tenacious one, the one with the golden hair, because oh, she's so brazen, so bold, and how could you not melt at her smile? Then there's that little dancer girl, she jumps all over the place, she lights up the whole room let me tell you, and don't you just love her? Isn't she just precious?

But . . . who's the boy? And why are his eyes so angry?

He chuckles darkly. No one's ever quite sure how to deal with the moody one. So they don't.

And they're lucky for that – he won't let them.

"Ed-lur?"

Alice stands in the doorframe, bathed in dim moonlight that washes everything in shades of grey. She clutches a teddy bear to her side, and there's strange shadows playing on her cherubic cheeks, but he can't tell if they're cast by her eyelashes or the shaking branches of the old tree just outside his window.

Her habitually indolent pronunciation of his name, brought about by an early speech deficiency, brings him back from his dark place. He's never bothered to correct her. He thinks it's sweet, and it's one of the only constants in his life.

"Yeah, Ali?"

He holds his hand out and scoots over, an invitation, and she walks on her tiptoes with her arm outstretched, fingers reaching for fingers that link together in a familiar way. She nestles into the crook of his arm and presses her nose against her big brother's shoulder.

He's the closest thing to a father she's ever had. She doesn't remember her biological one.

"I hate this rain," comes her whisper after a few comfortable, but loaded, seconds. She's taken the words right out of his mouth.

"I know," is all Edward says. That isn't something he can fix, though he'd love to find out how, so he doesn't bother to sugarcoat it or make any promises. They all end up broken, anyway.

"There's a girl."

He knows.

Oh, how he knows.

"She's all alone, she's so miserable. Did you see her eyes? They were brown, like cinnamon and tea, and they could be so warm, but it's like there's nothing behind them. And it was cold, it was raining, but she didn't even blush, didn't even wrap her arms around herself, and, a-and Ed-lur, she's . . . she's so beautiful . . . ?"

Alice's upward inflection could mean anything. She could be asking for affirmation. Contradiction. Gauging his interest. She might have to sneeze. She might not be done talking. Please, God, if You're there, let her not be done talking. Please don't let this mean what he thinks it means.

Edward has denied Alice so many things. He doesn't want to deny her anything, but it can't exactly be helped, not if they want to keep each other. Or, more accurately, if he wants to keep her.

Which is why he must give up the one thing he's found in this dark, wet hellhole that could actually be worth something.

Bella Swan. Wielder of large chocolate eyes, the size of the moon. Writer of sorrowful, poetic words, and thereby the owner of a heart unknowingly held prisoner by someone else. A girl in pain – Alice isn't the only one who's noticed.

The most beautiful mind he has ever encountered. The only mind he will never know.

But it's not like he would have been able to keep her, anyway.

"You can have her, Ali."

**\/\/\/\/\/**

You'll know what I'm talking about eventually.


End file.
